The European Union Monitoring Mission (EUMM) in Georgia is to temporarily deploy 40 of its civilian observers to the Armenia-Azerbaijan border for a maximum period of two months. The decision came during the 6 October meeting between Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan, Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev, French President Emmanuel Macron, and European Council President Charles Michel in Prague.
On the occasion of the meeting of the European Political Community held in Prague on 6 October 2022, the Republic of Armenia and the Republic of Azerbaijan confirmed their commitment to the UN Charter and to the Declaration agreed in Alma-Ata on 21 December 1991, in which both states recognise each other’s territorial integrity and sovereignty. They confirmed it would be a basis for the work of the border delimitation commissions and that the next meeting of the border commissions would take place in Brussels by the end of October. The aim of this mission is to build confidence and, through its reports, to contribute to the border commissions.
The mission was requested by Armenian Foreign Minister Ararat Mirzoyan on 22 September following last month’s fighting between Armenia and Azerbaijan and officially confirmed on 11 October. A technical assessment team, believed to be between 8-10 people is currently in Yerevan preparing for the mission’s deployment.
#Armenia 🇦🇲-#Azerbaijan 🇦🇿: @EUCouncil sets up monitoring capacity in 🇦🇲 along its international border with 🇦🇿 to monitor the situation in the region and contribute to restoring peace & security. Up to 40 EU monitoring experts will be deployed.
— EU Council Press (@EUCouncilPress) October 17, 2022
Read more 👇 #FAC
As I initially expected and commented on Twitter before details were announced, the civilian monitoring mission will be made up of observers from the European Union Monitoring Mission (EUMM) in Georgia. This makes a lot of sense as their mandate already covers “Georgia and the surrounding region” and they have substantial experience since late 2008 of monitoring the Administrative Boundary Lines (ABLs) in Georgia.
Geographically and logistically, they are also best situated to deploy in the shortest amount of time to Armenia. Unfortunately, Azerbaijan has not approved their presence on its side of the border. When I raised this issue with International Crisis Group (ICG) analyst Zaur Shiriyev in a webinar on 27th September, he said this is because Baku does not want to see an ‘internationalisation’ of the border.
In order to ensure a swift deployment of the EU monitoring capacity, it was decided that the monitoring experts will be temporarily deployed from the European Union Monitoring Mission in Georgia (EUMM Georgia). The EUMM is taking operational steps so that its monitoring capacity in Georgia is not impacted.
We might yet get a specific mandate, but until more is known, just to say that it was also announced that the mission will contribute to renewed efforts by Yerevan and Baku to delimit their shared border. The locations for the mission are still unknown but it would be safe to say that they would be expected to pay particular attention to those parts of the border where clashes are occurring with increasing frequency.
A word of caution, however. First, the mission is civilian, and even in Georgia it has been unable to prevent the ‘creeping annexation’ strategy employed by Russian forces in South Ossetia. Second, it is unknown whether the mission’s observers will come into contact with Russian border guards now present on some parts of Armenia’s eastern border in addition to their long established placement on the country’s borders with Iran and Turkiye.
Incidentally, a more pressing question is what size will this civilian mission be? @EUMMGeorgia is about 200 people and any similar monitoring mission on the Armenia-Azerbaijan can hardly be anything remotely close given all the logistics required in such a short amount of time.
— Onnik J. Krikorian (@onewmphoto) October 7, 2022
Nevertheless, most analysts and observers believe that the deployment of the mission will contribute to stability on the border as Armenia and Azerbaijan attempt to finalise a peace agreement and officially define their border by year’s end. I am particularly encouraged by the fact that it is EUMM Georgia sending some of their 200 observers given that they have considerable experience in this area.
Moreover, the potential for expanding and extending the mission is also there following any major progress in negotiations or following any peace deal. In the mid-2010s, I also worked with EUMM in Georgia, co-facilitating two workshops for Georgian, Abkhazian, and Ossetian journalists in Brussels and Istanbul, while also leading an internal EUMM working group on elaborating their social media strategy.
If the mission were to be extended, and as I’ve said for several years now, I’d particularly like to see an Incident Prevention and Response Mechanism (IPRM) introduced or, indeed, even within the next two months.
